Web-based applications may be provided on a server computer and accessed by a client computer via a web browser. Some web-based applications are publicly-accessible without restriction, while other web-based applications implement an authentication procedure whereby access is limited to those who can be successfully authenticated. A conventional authentication procedure may request that a user enters a login identifier and a corresponding password. The web-based application may then communicate with an authentication server, which authenticates the user based on the login identifier and the password.
An example of a web-based application is a web-based productivity application. Web-based productivity applications may include word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, presentation applications, electronic mail applications, unstructured collaborative authoring applications, and the like. In the case of web-based productivity applications, the authentication procedure may function as a security feature that restricts access to a document to certain people. For example, if a first user creates a document and saves the document onto the server computer, the authentication procedure may prevent a second user from accessing the document.
When a user initially accesses a document through the web browser, the web browser may display an editing surface containing the document. As the user edits the document by adding content and removing content, the web browser may or may not continue communicating with the web-based productivity application. If the web browser does not communicate with the web-based productivity application for a sufficient period of time, the web-based productivity application may lose the user authentication through, for example, a timeout or some other intervening action. The web-based productivity application may then provide the user with an option to re-authenticate by reentering the login identifier and password. However, the user may lose any changes made to the document since the last save of the document. In particular, re-authenticating the user may involve a full-page navigation away from the web page containing the changes. The user may become very frustrated over the web-based application if significant portions of a document are lost.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.